


So I Took a Faithful Leap

by odetteandodile



Series: This Soldier Knows [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Peggy Carter, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The First Avenger, Howling Commandos - Freeform, Howling Commandos Era, M/M, Pining, Puppies, Slow Burn, Soldier homecoming angst, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve the bearded farmer, WWII era, learning to be at peace, nobody falls and nobody crashes any planes, so so much pining, this has a lot of Band of Brothers vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-25 10:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16195478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odetteandodile/pseuds/odetteandodile
Summary: Bucky doesn’t fall and Steve doesn’t crash. The Howling Commados take out the remaining Hydra bases…and then they go home, just like all the other allied soldiers. Throughout the war, they discuss what each of them would do if they make it back again. The only person Steve doesn’t ask is Bucky. He’s afraid of the answer.Steve himself isn’t sure if he knows how to do anything but be a soldier and a weapon anymore, but remembering the promise he made he vows to try to be just a good man again.He buys a farm in Washington state, and tries to relearn how to be at peace.(Featuring: Steve as a bearded farmer, two rescued puppies, badass Peggy Carter speaking truth, the Howling Commandos doing the same, an apple orchard, soldier homecoming angst, and two dumb boys waiting way too long to talk it out–but don’t worry, they do.)





	So I Took a Faithful Leap

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2018 Captain America Big Bang! 
> 
> Please check out the gorgeous art by gassadaarts [on tumblr!](http://gassadaarts.tumblr.com/post/178857837793/campfire-confessions-and-rescue-painted-by-gassada) featuring campfire closeness and PUPPIES.
> 
> And also this absolute loveliness by witchylurker in all its homecoming [goodness.](https://witchylurker.tumblr.com/post/178860218866/art-for-odette-and-odiles-fic-so-i-took-a)
> 
> Big thanks to both my artists for bringing this to life, as well as [calendulae](https://calendulae.tumblr.com) my forever and ever beta.

**December, 1945**  
For the boys still out on the line, unlike how it seems back at home, the war ends not with a bang of victory but with a series of whimpers. 

It’s true for none more so than the Howling Commandos. While New York and London and Paris celebrate VE Day with tickertape and champagne their fight in Europe continues. VJ Day passes much the same—a telegram lets them know when it’s over, and they nod and carry on. 

They spend the last months of their fight picking off Hydra bases one by one, until the organization has mostly deserted or retreated to a few final locations. After they stop Schmidt from taking off in one of his fancy planes (with Bucky pulling off a spectacular headshot while Steve distracts the man) there is very little resistance left. While everyone figures there were probably a few who got away, there’s not much they can do about that. Until they come back out of the woodwork, Hydra is done.

When the war finally ends for them—they refer to it as VH Day for victory over Hydra with a deep sense of irony—there is no tickertape and no parades. The rest of the world has already had its face turned toward peace for several long months. The Howlers may receive commendations for their efforts, but it happens quietly and without fanfare. The best of their work has been in in the service of making sure the rest of the world never has to know it happened in the first place. 

For all the time that men in a dwindling war spend thinking of and longing for the time after (once they can think of it, when it feels there’s a better chance that they’ll make it home than not) they don’t say much about it when the time comes aside from _goodbye_ and _good luck_. 

Each departure and parting is bittersweet—all of them filled with the profound gladness that it isn’t the ultimate goodbye to their brothers in arms that they’d prepared for silently before every battle—but it’s still a loss, one that can’t be articulated. 

Jones is the first to go, eager to get home in time to resume his studies in the new semester. He boards a steamer out of London, smile as easy and bright as ever as he waves down the gangplank. 

Morita leaves for California, a grim but determined expression on his face. He’s headed into a new battle when he gets home, one he’ll go into without back up from any of them this time.  
Falsworth doesn’t say goodbye. He simply disappears somewhere into the ravaged London streets one evening from their quarters and doesn’t return. 

Dum Dum doesn’t leave at all. For reasons Steve still can’t begin to fathom, he doesn’t take the discharge they’ve all been offered. A few others choose the same, and Steve gives Dugan command of the new Howling Commandos with his blessing. 

Steve understands each of their decisions. He’s asked each of them at some point, in a foxhole or around a campfire or during long hours of a stakeout what they would do if the time came. 

But Bucky…Bucky hasn’t left yet either. And for all the moments that Steve should have asked him, he never managed to find out what Bucky would do if they made it through the war alive. Now, standing in front of him in fresh civilian clothes instead of his Captain America uniform, Steve can admit to himself that it was because he was afraid of Bucky’s answer. 

He’s still afraid. Now he’s just afraid and also out of time. 

There is a plane sitting on the small airstrip, waiting only for him to board before it starts up its engines and leaps skyward. He tells himself it is the last perk of being “Captain America” he’s going to take advantage of before becoming just Steve Rogers again. It’s the only way he can see that will honor the promise he made to Erskine. He needs to know that he can be as good a man in peace as he’s tried to be in war. And he can’t do that here. 

“Well,” he turns to Bucky, whose face immediately dons a cheerful smile. Steve wonders what expression he was wearing before it changed for his benefit. 

“Well, Cap.” Bucky says, with a forced lightness that Steve thinks he may be the only one to see through, “end of the line, huh?”

Steve freezes at the expression. How many times had they said they were with each other until then? He hadn’t meant it to be now, until a moment like this. He’d meant something else entirely. Had Bucky?

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not for me.” 

He doesn’t know if Bucky hears what he means, and Bucky doesn’t say anything. Steve thinks the expression on his face may falter a little, but Bucky pulls him into a quick, firm hug before he can really read it. 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he says, tightening his grip fiercely for just a moment before he lets Steve go. 

Steve knows his lines, what he’s supposed to say to that to keep things light—keep things the same. 

Instead he says, “You know where to find me, Buck. When you want to.” 

Then he’s boarding the plane, worn army duffel in hand. 

As the little plane taxis down the runway for takeoff, Steve watches the solitary figure in army drab retreating from him—headed for a horizon that is tilting unsteadily away from Steve’s view.

*

**March, 1946**

Steve sighs, resting his hands on his shovel and straightening up to survey his work. 

The garden bed now sports two dozen wobbly, uneven rows ready to be planted. He smiles a little, proud of the effort. 

While his super soldier strength is unchanged, it’s been more of a challenge than he anticipated to learn how to apply that strength to an entirely new kind of work. He’d been in bootcamp long enough by the time Erskine had recruited him that the skills he’d needed were already there—just given an entirely new level of effectiveness when exercised by his new body. 

But he’d never known before how to build things, plant things, grow things. Either in his old body or this one. The scrawny kid he’d been in Brooklyn couldn’t have imagined buying a farm any more than this Steve knew how to run one. But he has enjoyed figuring it out. And once he’d gotten the hang of it—and had a few delicately offered and helpful suggestions given by neighbors—he’d found that his hands are just as suited to wielding a hammer as a gun, that he can lift a hay bale as easily as he had cleared Czech hedgehogs, and that he can build walls as well as break through them. 

His body is learning quickly how to be as strong in peace as it had been in fighting. 

Then a bang from across the yard sends him leaping into a defensive stance, shovel gripped in front of him with both hands before he realizes it’s just one of the barn doors that’s been blown open by the wind. His body may be getting better and better at peacetime, but his mind and reflexes have yet to catch up. 

_Am I a good man Erskine?_ He thinks, _or have I become too good weapon?_

Steve lets out another sigh, this one heavier from dissatisfaction than the first, his pleased mood evaporated for the time being. 

He puts his shovel away in its spot in the shed, then washes the dirt off his hands at the outdoor tap. He wonders, in moments like this, if coming home—if _not being_ a soldier—has been any easier for the rest of his men. He thinks sometimes that it would be nice if his body still got tired, if he could fall into bed at the end of a day with a body that was too tired to jump back out at the smallest noise. 

Though he writes to the boys occasionally, Steve wouldn’t know how to ask. And he hasn’t heard from the one he’d really want to. 

He wonders how—and where—Bucky is sleeping these days. 

*

**May, 1945**

“So the Fuhrer is fucked, huh?” Dugan asks, disinterestedly from beneath his bowler. 

“Yeah,” Steve says, sitting next to him heavily, eyes on the fire. 

The rest of the guys are out scouting or catching some much needed shuteye by the time Steve returns from HQ with the news. He thinks Dugan is asleep too, stretched out by the low fire, before he tilts the hat back from his face with one finger to ask what the news is. 

“Guessing from your general lack of enthusiasm that that _doesn’t_ mean the Third Reich immediately crumbled taking the rest of Hydra with it,” Dugan drawls. 

“Nope, guess not.” 

“Well, don’t let it get you too down Cap. Only a matter of time.” His tone is glib and certain, but Steve looks at him thoughtfully for a few moments considering it. 

“Think so?” He asks at last, softly. Dum Dum doesn’t answer right away, and Steve thinks he may have fallen asleep and not heard. 

Then the other man groans, sitting up and replacing the hat on his head to sit beside Steve, also looking at the fire. 

“Don’t you?” he asks, levelly. 

Steve thinks about it. Ultimately he can only bring himself to be honest. “I don’t know. I hope so.” Then he shakes himself a little, glancing around for any of the other guys who might be listening, and adds, “let’s keep that between you and me though.”

Dugan nods, understanding. The best thing for everyone’s morale is making sure they all still believe this is a fight that has an end, however far off or difficult it seems. But Dum Dum is a smart man and a good NCO, and he knows as well as Steve does that Hydra is a much more complex enemy than the Nazis ever have been. Steve knows that as much as the Commandos respect him, it’s Dugan who they take their cues from when it comes to their state of mind. 

“They’re in it ’til it’s done, Cap.” Dugan says after a pause. “We all wanna see this thing through. You didn’t get saddled with any quitters—nobody on their way home yet.” 

“Yeah,” Steve says, thoughts distant. He knows it’s true and it’s why he picked each of them—yet at the same time, wishes it weren’t. He wants all of them to get to go home, and the longer they keep fighting the more chances there are that some of them won’t. He pushes the thought away, as he has a thousand times before. There’s no room for it out here—no room for thoughts of defeat. 

“What are you gonna do after this Dum Dum?” he asks, trying to turn all the strength of will he has toward a future where the question matters.  
Dum Dum gives a rough bark of laughter. “Shit Cap, never really expected there to be an after. Now that it looks like there might be…I dunno. Dunno that I want one. Howling Commandos been the closest thing I got to family.” 

Steve wants badly to look at Dugan’s face, to see if the lightness in his voice has reached his eyes. But he knows it would break a kind of code men around fires like this share, and so he keeps his eyes on the flames instead. 

“What about you, Cap?” Dugan asks, voice lowered even further. 

Steve shakes his head. “I uh—I don’t know.” 

He can’t help but cut his eyes over, just a moment, to the small drab tent that Bucky is presumably asleep in. 

“You know,” Dugan remarks, tone bland, “there’s some guys—guys like me I guess—who get so good at this it’s hard for us to go back to being anything else…” 

Steve is silent, waiting for the rest of the sentence. Dugan looks over at him, fixing Steve with an icy, intent look, and Steve can’t look away. He both dreads and wants to hear Dugan’s assessment of him. 

“Gotta say Cap—I’ve never thought you’re one of ’em. However good you are at this, and I don’t mean to say you’re anything but the best, I don’t think this is the best you can do.” He looks away again, releasing Steve from his gaze. “And you deserve to figure out what your best is, if nothin’ else.” 

Steve doesn’t reply. He has nothing to say. Soon Dum Dum stretches out again, replacing the bowler over his face, by all appearances going to sleep. 

Steve sits by the fire until it dies, and he can no longer see the outlines of the little canvas tent sitting at the edge of the clearing. 

*

**June, 1946**

Steve frowns at the letter sitting on top of the stack of mail when the girl behind the desk hands it to him. He gets few enough letters that receiving one in itself is remarkable, but he also doesn’t recognize the handwriting or the return address. Only a very small handful of people know to write anything to an S. Grant Rogers in Washington state, and most of them are Howlers who certainly don’t write in this feminine looping script. 

He stares at it long enough, brows furrowed in confusion that the girl asks him, 

“Everything alright Mr. Rogers?” her tone anxious. 

He quickly drops the frown and fixes a smile on his face, nodding. 

“Yeah—yes, just uh—wasn’t expecting to hear back so soon.” 

Her worried expression eases into a smile, “post is getting pretty much back to normal these days with all you boys back. Nice hearing back so quick finally!”

Steve nods in agreement, shuffling the letter between two seed catalogues for later, saying something pleasant and vague in agreement as he leaves. 

He tries to keep the frown off of his face as he steps back onto the street, making his way toward the beat up old truck he bought during his first month here to haul farm stuff around. Steve’s lived here—or at least on the farm close by—long enough that he knows a few of the most constant faces in town, and they know him. Or at least know Steve, the fella that bought the old Guffin place. 

In fact, he hears his name called and turns to look. Frank and Dottie are waving at him from in front of the hardware store, and he waves back with a real smile this time. 

Frank and Dottie are his closest neighbors; they own the next farm up from his about a mile down the road. It was Frank who visited him the first week he moved in, and found him earnestly but unskillfully trying to mend the tattered roof with only the aid of the two library books he could find on anything close to the subject. Frank had taken one look at Steve’s random assortment of tools and had tactfully offered to help, if Steve would come by later in the week and give him a hand with a busted barn door. Steve had leapt at the exchange, only a little embarrassed as Frank walked him patiently through the undertaking. 

The two of them had dropped by regularly since then, usually with the insistence that they had time to spare or that Dottie had accidentally cooked too much of whatever she was bringing and could Steve possibly make use of it? 

He is grateful beyond expressing—which is good, because they never let him express it before they wave it off entirely. They’re stoic, private in that old-school Scandinavian sort of way and it seems like they don’t hate anything more than they hate a fuss. Just being neighborly, they say each time. He helps them in return, when he can, if Frank has any sort of project where Steve’s brawn is more required than his expertise. 

Steve’s gratitude is doubly deep for the fact that Frank and Dottie are almost certainly aware of his real identity. Frank had slipped, early on that first day, and called him Captain. But the older man had taken one look at the frozen terror on Steve’s face and changed the subject immediately, never mentioning it again. 

He’d decided to let his beard grow out after that. It’s bought him some amount of anonymity in town, and as far as he can tell Frank and Dottie never shared with anyone else who their neighbor might have been during the war years. He doesn’t think anyone would have been able to resist talking to him about it if that news had ever gotten around—not in a small town like this. 

It’s not so different from the cramped apartment building he’d grown up in, which surprised him at first. Everybody may live all sprawled out over the countryside, but word gets around just as quick whenever there’s any kind of gossip. 

Steve makes his way home by winding country lanes, not enjoying the drive as much as he usually would. His eyes keep darting to the letter on his passenger seat. 

He makes himself unload his groceries and put away his library books like he usually does before he picks up the thick envelope, tearing into it at his spindly kitchen table. 

Inside the envelope is another, addressed in a cramped, bold hand that he _does_ recognize—which answers one question by replacing it with several more. 

It’s not the first time Peggy has written to him here. But it’s the first time it’s been addressed and packaged by someone else. He frowns as he begins to read. 

_My dear Steve,_

_I hope country life is treating you as well as you deserve. How is your garden coming along? Must be starting to see some progress—if you’ve done it right, of course. But I’m sure you’ve taken to that as well as everything you set your mind to, so I expect to hear of a successful harvest when you write me back._

_Things in the service have been rather duller in your absence, as I’m sure you can imagine. The lack of work for me is a bit of a double edged sword. I’m bored as all hell much of the time coming up empty-handed for anything new to report, but seems it means that Hydra really is finished. Perhaps I will take a cue from you one of these days and start thinking about another line of work. Or at least another enemy to track. Things haven’t fallen out particularly well with all of our allies from the war, as I’m sure you know. But I suppose the Russians have always had their own way of doing things so I suspect I won’t be bored for long._

_Your Howling Commandos continue to be as sharp a unit as ever despite having a slightly slower flow of work—the newly minted Cpt. Dugan has seen to that. Funnily enough, slave driver that he is, he’s had no shortage of replacements begging to be recruited as Howlers. So I suspect the name will continue strong for some time yet, even with Captain America gone into retirement._

_But this brings me to my real reason for writing—not that checking in on you isn’t something I plan to keep doing for the foreseeable future. I thought that you might like to know that Sgt. Barnes is not with the Commandos at present. He took up the offer of some leave a short time ago—you know you were all well-entitled to a good deal by the end here. I happened to see him before he left and he indicated, or I inferred, that he had not been in touch with you since your departure. I offered to give him your address, but he assured me he had it.  
Steve, I’m going to be much more frank with you than I ever quite got around to being in person. I didn’t understand at first, when things seemed to unravel between us before they could really begin. But I came to see, or I think to understand something you told me long before anything else—that you were waiting for your right partner. It took me a while to realize that the problem wasn’t that you hadn’t found them yet, it was that you had and felt it was hopeless._

Steve realizes his hands are shaking, and he reads the last sentence several times before he can go on, desperate to see if he read it correctly. 

_I say this not to upset you or to frighten you, but because—despite what you might believe—I care about you. And I think I know you, too. You and Sgt. Barnes share what I think is a stubbornness unmatched by almost anybody. But I can tell you also, that he shared the same exact kind of lost look that I saw on your face that last night before you left._

_You deserve to be happy, Captain Rogers. Don’t let yourself be the only thing keeping you from what might make you that way. Love really is the best truly good thing any of us can add to this world._

_With all of mine,_

_Peggy_

_P.S. I intend to send this through a discreet friend of mine in town rather than my own address. If you have any desire to write me back after this, you may reply via the same route—you can rely on it getting to me directly and without any other eyes on it but mine._

Steve lets the letter fall back to the table, resting his head in his still shaking hands. 

For the first time since coming out of Erskine’s machine, he feels the old snag in his chest like he can’t catch his breath. Like he could drown on dry land. 

Peggy had seen, had known—had guessed? 

He’d refused to name for himself exactly what the ties were binding him and Bucky. There’d been times as they’d grown beyond the easy comradeship of boyhood when it seemed like, maybe, in their new adulthood things were shifting, building between them—that something had to give and they’d have to name it, out in the open. He can remember the last summer before the war lying side by side on the floor of their final, dingy apartment, laughing and happy and yet filled with the sense that it _wasn’t enough, it was never enough_. And a hundred times that feeling nearly crystalized into…something. 

But it had never gotten the chance. First came the war and Bucky enlisting, putting an end to the easy rhythm that had seemed so close to being more. And then Steve had met Erskine, and when he and Bucky were reunited he barely had his head on straight—neither of them did—and there was no space to think about it. Or at least, not much. 

Was he so transparent? If Peggy was right, then he was. And if she was right, he couldn’t keep telling himself that he’d kept it hidden from Bucky, who of all people knew him best, even better than her. And if so…why hadn’t Bucky spoken? Maybe he had, and Steve hadn’t been listening. 

Maybe that day on the runway when they’d said goodbye, one of them had actually meant it. 

*

**July, 1945**

They’re under different stars, around a different fire. 

Although it’s summer now, the proximity to the ocean keeps the air cool enough at night to warrant one. It’s also comforting, a centering sun for their little band to orbit in an otherwise unmarked camp. 

It’s the end of several hard, bloody days of fighting. The base they’d sought here was well-hidden, hard to crack. And they’d liberated prisoners at this one too—not POWs, civilians from nearby towns—and it hit close to home for everyone. They’d been subdued afterward, no one caring to celebrate this particular victory. 

Nobody had been ambitious enough to set up tents either, everyone preferring to crawl straight into bedrolls in the open air, arranged at various distances from the fire. 

Steve offered to take the first watch alone—with the Hydra base taken out, they aren’t in any particular danger here. Plus, as he reminds everyone, he’s a super soldier and doesn’t need the rest as much as they do. 

Still, he finds Gabe sitting up with him as the others collapse into soft breathing and the occasional snore. No matter how many times he tries, the men never let him take his watch completely alone—some wordless lot they draw amongst themselves behind Steve’s back always leaves someone who supposedly isn’t tired yet, or who wants to “enjoy the fresh air first.” At least half of the time it’s Bucky. Tonight it’s Jones. Steve is glad. As much as he wishes _all_ of them would just rest and let him stay up on his own, Bucky took especially heavy fighting today and Steve wants to know he’s getting the sleep he needs. 

Gabe takes a swig of water from his canteen, offering it over to Steve. He takes a drink gratefully, and hands it back. 

“ _Les coquelicots soufflen entre les croix_ ,” Gabe says softly. 

“What’s that?” 

“Red poppies,” he replies, pointing to a small cluster of the flowers across the clearing. “I didn’t know they still bloomed this late.” 

“What was the rest of it, about the crosses?”

Gabe’s mouth quirks in a dry smile. “Dernier rubbing off on you Cap?”

Steve smiles, “that one isn’t that hard to guess.” 

“In Flander’s fields the poppies blow, between the crosses row on row.” Gabe pauses, then recites, “That mark our place, and in the sky the larks still bravely singing fly—scarce heard amongst the guns below.” 

Gabe sighs. “It’s a poem, from the Great War. Well—the last one.” 

“I know it.” Steve says. “Don’t know it in French though.” 

“Yeah,” Gabe says with a grimace, leaning back on his elbows. “Well, the rhyme scheme doesn’t really translate. I just like saying _les coquelicots_.” 

They’re both quiet, and Steve adds a few more branches to the fire. He thinks about the next part of the poem, which he remembers memorizing as a school kid for Armistice Day. Back when the world thought nothing like that war could ever happen again. 

_We are the Dead. Short days ago_  
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,  
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,  
In Flander’s fields. 

Gabe’s soft voice interrupts his remembering. 

“Didn’t go far enough with my German classes to learn any poems. Or the names of flowers.” His face is unreadable in the low firelight. “Guess it wouldn’t have helped any. Not with what I needed to know.” 

Steve doesn’t know what to say. Jones is generally one of the more affable members of the group, a steady personality that always helps bolster the ones who are more prone to getting overwhelmed by it all. Suddenly Steve realizes that he’s been a fool not to know that that wasn’t all there was to him, that like Dugan he was putting it on for the good of the guys. He’s spared from saying something awkward and earnest when Gabe speaks again, apparently feeling freer tonight for whatever reason, to share at least a little more of himself with his Captain. 

“I hope I learn the words for the beautiful things when I go back. I hope—maybe if I learn the names of enough flowers and trees and whatever else, that might take up some of the space where all I got now is guns and how to tell a man to kneel with his hands behind his head.”

“I—I’m sorry, Gabe—” Steve falters. 

“Nah man, don’t be. I needed it. You guys needed it. I haven’t forgotten that I’m one of the ones you had to fight for special dispensation to keep on the team, you know? I’m proud of that. But I don’t wanna need that forever, ya know?” 

He pushes himself back up, leaning forward to nudge a branch that has fallen to the edge of the fire with his boot. It gives Steve a moment to think over his response. 

“So why…why go back to it at all? Why not something new?”

Gabe shrugs. “I don’t know man. It’s just—no matter what, I’m not gonna be new again, right? All this shit I’ve seen—the shit I’ve done—that’s still there. If I try to go home and be somebody I never was, it’s like I never came back at all. I wanna come back _me_ , and if that means working with threads that have gotten a little bloodied up instead of just dropping them…then that’s what it is.”

Steve’s realizes his mouth has dropped open a little in surprise, and he closes it quickly. 

“Jesus, Jones,” he says after a spell, “didn’t realize you were such a poet. Where’s all this been?”

Gabe chuckles, mostly to himself it seems. “Oh I got a journal in my pack gets most of the benefit of my poetic moments.” He shoots Steve a look from the corner of his eye. “What about you, Cap?”

“Written any poetry? No, you can thank all those lucky stars up there you don’t have to be subjected to that.” 

Gabe laughs again, sounding more like the cheerful man Steve is used to. But it won’t fool him now, not again. 

“No, I mean—what’s back home for you? What are you gonna be picking up if we get back?”

Steve hears and notes his if where he wishes the man was thinking of a when, but apparently they both know it’s too soon for that switch. Steve considers the question. 

“Not sure, Gabe. I’ve uh—changed a lot since last time I was back there.”

“Goes without saying, Cap. Though I know it’s not the same way for you. Still, you got some bloodied threads, ain’t any of them worth holding onto?”

Steve looks over the field of sleeping bags. 

“Maybe. But sometimes that feels like all I’ve got. Hard to remember anything I had before all this that I could still go back to.” 

Gabe just nods. They watch the fire a while longer in a thoughtful silence, before a jaw-cracking yawn takes over Jones’ face. 

“Alright Jones,” Steve says to him in his best command voice. “I’m giving you a choice—either go to sleep now and I don’t tell anyone about it, or stay up the rest of this watch with me but I _tell_ everyone you fell asleep.” He thinks for a minute before adding, “ _And_ I write you up for failure to obey a direct order. I’m serious this time.” 

Gabe looks at him, frowning. Then he gives Steve a flashing white grin. 

“Aye-aye Captain.” He gets to his feet and moves off into the dark of the clearing without further protest. 

Only after Steve hears him crawl into his sleeping bag and finish settling does Steve let his own yawn overtake him. He may have an unnatural ability to go for longer without sleep than the men, but it’s been a long few days even for him. 

He starts badly as a figure drops into Gabe’s empty spot next to him. 

“Fucking _Christ_ Barnes,” he says in an angry whisper once his heart leaves his throat, “don’t you make any noise anymore?”

Bucky grins at him wickedly, like he’s enjoying the momentary panic he caused. 

“I’m a trained sniper now, punk. Stealth is my middle name.” 

Steve’s mouth twists as he fights a smile, elbowing Bucky in the ribs. 

“So I guess that means Buchanan’s out then? Should I be calling you James now?”

Bucky retaliates with a quick, painful twist of Steve’s ear, and Steve covers his mouth to keep from yelping aloud. 

“Not on your life Stevie, or else I’m gonna practice some of my other sniper skills on you.” 

Steve snorts, and Bucky smiles too, both of them relaxing back into companionable silence. 

Steve doesn’t know how long they sit like that, knees drawn up, facing into the fire. They’re sitting near enough that he doesn’t even have to lean to press his shoulder to Bucky’s, the warmth where their arms stay locked tight against one another comforting and familiar. 

“You’re wrong you know.” Bucky says in a low voice, turning his head slightly so that the words are spoken close to Steve’s ear. 

“Hmm?” Steve asks, a little lost. He didn’t realize he was drifting, eyes transfixed by the shifting colors of the coals. 

“You’re not that different now—from before.”

Steve huffs a little humorless laugh. “Who are you talking to, Buck? Look at me.”

Bucky shakes his head, almost impatiently. “No—I don’t mean all…this.” He gestures with his eyes, sweeping them up and down Steve’s stretched and broadened body. “I mean who you _were_ before. It’s the same. It’ll be the same when you go back.” 

Steve swallows, hearing Bucky’s _when_. 

“So I go back to Brooklyn? Go back to working a desk at the docks? Think people will let me be who I was then, after what I’ve been here?” he gives a bitter little laugh. “How am I supposed to go back and fit this—this body—into that life, when the whole reason they gave it to me was to go to war?”

Bucky’s head is low, and his eyes are shadowed and dark in the firelight. But Steve can tell that he has his jaw set. 

“You think you’re the only one who feels like that?” He asks at last, in a deadened voice that makes Steve’s breath catch in his throat. 

Bucky turns to look at him, his dark eyes glittering a little with flame. Steve doesn’t know what to say—how to take any of it back or smooth it over—to say that he _knows_ Bucky feels like that too, like he’s been remolded into something he didn’t choose. 

And then suddenly he has forgotten everything completely because Bucky is tilting his face toward Steve’s. The movement is slight, but Steve is immediately aware of Bucky’s light breath on his cheek and every sharp angle of his jaw and cheekbones and the soft cupid’s bow of his mouth, and is Bucky about to…?

He brushes his nose lightly along Steve’s hairline, his soft breath warm against Steve’s cheek. His face is side on to Steve’s, almost as if he’s just leaned in to whisper something in his ear. But Steve can feel the corner of his lips drifting butterfly soft across his jaw, even if the moment is so brief he could have blinked and missed it. And for just a moment, the very blood in his veins holds its breath, in anticipation of Bucky’s lips closing the small distance they need to cross to find Steve’s. 

But he isn’t. He doesn’t. As soon as the thought occurs—the crazy, thrilling, overpowering thought—Bucky is gone. 

He slips away with an efficiency and noiselessness that leaves Steve wondering if he’d really ever been there in the first place—or if it had only been a dream.

*

**September, 1946**

By the time summer comes to an end, Peggy’s faith in his farming ability is shown out in a small but respectable crop to be harvested. Though Steve is pretty sure that whatever minimal success he has experienced in his first planting season is only by the grace of god—and more likely by the grace of Frank. And Dottie even helps him to can most of it.

He had only intended really to focus his efforts this first year on his modest garden, just to get his hand in the game and make sure he could figure out how to keep things alive before getting more ambitious. But after a few visits Frank had asked, as innocently as he always managed to, when Steve was going to revive the old apple orchard that ran down from the far side of the garden. 

Much like all the rest of Frank’s innocent questions, it had turned into a suggestion. Which had turned into advice. Which had turned into assistance. 

And now Steve has an acre of mature apple trees, all cleared of weeds and pruned to health, happily growing apples that will be ready next month. 

He doesn’t really know what one is supposed to do with a whole orchard’s worth of apples, but his chest swells a little bit with proud affection every time he looks over it from his kitchen window anyway, as he is this morning. Things are growing because _he_ helped them to. 

A brief flash of memory comes to him—Bucky’s dark eyes, gazing at him seriously as he hands him a shiny, red apple. They’d rarely eaten much fruit in those years—too expensive with his mom so often ill. But Bucky had managed to buy one for each of them, with pocket money he’d saved up, he explained. They’d made a big ceremony of the process, very solemnly promising both to bite into them at the same time so nobody finished theirs first. He can still taste that first bite, all these years later. 

Steve wishes Bucky were here to see a whole grove of them, growing redder by the day among the leaves. 

He wishes he knew where Bucky was. He has started writing to Peggy to ask her a dozen different time…but he’s crumpled all of the letters, half-written. He just can’t seem to find the words. 

It starts to get a little chillier here now, although nothing like the turn from summer to fall in Brooklyn with its bitter cold mornings heralding the arrival of increasingly colder nights. 

He decides—at another diplomatic question/suggestion of Frank’s—that he’d better start shoring up the house against winter, and he sees an advertisement in the newspaper for firewood. Steve hasn’t really had much in the way of fires in the fireplace up until now, but he figures that seems like something he might want to do when it gets cold. Or he assumes. Isn’t that why the house would have a fireplace in the first place?

He’s in his truck, bumping along the pitted main street on the way across town to collect the wood when he sees a kid at the crossroads, thumb out for a ride.  
Steve frowns, slowing to a stop. 

“Hey son, you alright?”

The boy tips his chin up, a little defiantly, “Yes sir, just need a lift out of town if you’re headed east.” 

“Your parents aren’t gonna be looking for you?” Steve asks, hazarding a guess. 

The boy’s mouth drops open in surprise, followed quickly by something like incredulity. “I’m _twenty_!” he says in a strangled voice. 

“Hmm,” Steve says, dubiously. “What’s east? And why aren’t you on a bus or something?”

The boy shrugs, remnants of irritation on his face. “Work, I hope. Lost my job here, gotta go somewhere. And I can’t afford a ticket.” He scuffs his foot on the ground, and Steve recognizes someone trying to say something very important in a way that seems very unimportant to him. “All the GIs coming home…I reckon most places ain’t got much use for somebody like me anymore.”

Steve’s face softens, and he looks at the kid again more carefully—this time he takes in the shabby but painstakingly clean trousers, the ancient suitcase next to him, and the reedy frame. But he also notices again the set to his jaw, even in a thin face, like he’d rather be dead than pitied. He’s got dark hair, otherwise Steve would swear he was looking at himself. 

Steve runs a hand through his hair, trying to decide if what he’s about to do is actually benevolent or entirely selfish. 

He looks over at the kid, who’s pretending not to look back as if he considers Steve’s next sentence a matter of total indifference. 

“Not headed east. But I could use some help—bought a farm up on Trinity Lane. It’s uh—well it’s almost getting to be too much for me on my own now that it’s harvesting time.” 

The boy looks back at him, eyes keen but wary. “That the old Guffin place?”

Steve grins, “that’s the one. Got apples coming in soon and I—well honestly I’m a little over my head. I’d hire you on if you wanted—couple of weeks’ work and board ’til you can afford the ticket.” 

The boy looks at him intently for a minute. Then he nods his head. “Yeah. Might be I could help you out.”

Without further delay he steps forward, hoisting his suitcase into the bed of the truck, and then slides into the passenger’s seat. 

“What’s your name, kid?” Steve asks as he puts the truck back into gear and rolls away from the stop sign. 

“Teddy.” He looks over at Steve appraisingly. “And you’re Mr. Rogers. Already heard about you a little in town.” 

Steve grimaces at the name with the unfamiliar title, one he can’t get used to. 

“You can just call me Steve.” 

“Okay.”

Teddy is silent, and Steve wonders what’s going through the kid’s mind. He also wonders if he’s making a huge mistake. But he can’t help it—he remembers what it was like, trying to get work with the constant fear that there would always be someone taller, stronger, and better for the job than you. But you had to try anyway or you wouldn’t eat. He’d always had someone he could fall back on, if things got real tight. Seems like Teddy doesn’t. 

“Where you headed anyway mis—Steve? Ain’t your place back the other side of town?”

Steve nods. “Picking up a load of firewood. So I guess we’re headed out to your first job.”

“Alright.” Teddy says, comfortably. Steve smiles. Maybe the kid’ll be okay. 

 

They get the wood loaded into the truck quickly—and yes, Steve wasn’t exactly worried about doing all the heavy lifting himself, but it’s nice having the company. It makes him think of the Howlers, and how long it’s been since he’s been on his own. 

He stops in town on their way back to the farm, making the excuse that he has to get his mail anyway. In reality, he’s remembered that he’s got barely anything edible left in the icebox—he’s been making due on canned stuff, which isn’t so bad after MREs. But he doesn’t want to subject Teddy to his soldier’s palette. 

So he picks up some groceries, remembering as an afterthought to duck into the post office to complete his ruse, not expecting anything. He rarely has mail he doesn’t already know is coming. 

But there is something for him, the girl behind the desk informs him happily (she’s always happy for him when he receives letters, for some reason) as she hands him a slim white envelope. 

Steve recognizes the handwriting immediately, although he doesn’t believe it. 

His fingers are trembling a little as he takes it, thanking the girl absently and turning toward the truck. He’s a little startled to see someone sitting in it already, waiting for him, until he remembers of course Teddy is still there. The scrawling black ink on the thin paper of the envelope has driven everything else out of his mind. But Teddy looks at his expression a little nervously, and Steve shakes the feeling away, stuffing the letter into the pocket of his jacket. 

“You hungry, kid?” he says to Teddy, as cheerfully as he can, “I’m thinking ham and potatoes.”

 

Ultimately, Steve doesn’t make anything for dinner. Teddy takes one disparaging look at his preparations and waves him away from the stove completely. 

“You were right you could use a hand around here.” Teddy remarks, looking a little more at ease as he starts cutting up potatoes. “What’ve you been eating this whole time if you can’t cook?”

Steve rubs the back of his neck, sheepishly. “Well I—I gotta tell ya Teddy I don’t really know.” 

Teddy smirks, and pulls down a pan for the potatoes. “Thought you were just being nice when you pulled over. Figured you’d let me do a coupla chores to save me from myself and then try to send me back to town.” 

“And now you don’t think it was that nice after all?”

Teddy laughs. “No, now I think you needed my help worse than I needed yours. Maybe by the end of apple harvest I can teach you how to cook a couple things.” 

Steve gives a startled laugh at the kid’s cheek. He can’t disagree. 

After dinner Steve tries awkwardly to figure out where to put him. He hasn’t exactly kitted the place out for another person at this point. But Teddy looks around, unperturbed, and points to the small spare room off the kitchen. 

“Okay if I take this one?” he asks. 

“Oh—yeah, that one’s fine. Sorry it’s not more—well, I haven’t really had a lot of people around the place yet. But there’s blankets, I think, in the closet maybe…” he trails off. 

Teddy shrugs. “Doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you.” 

He picks up his suitcase and makes for the room, turning around before he closes the door.

“I’m up with the sun, most days. So you can show me what you want done startin’ tomorrow. Thanks again Mr. Rog—Steve.” 

“You got it kid.” 

 

Steve lets out a long sigh once Teddy’s door is closed, slumping in his chair at the kitchen table. It’s the most prolonged interaction he’s had with anyone in months, and he’s worried about keeping it up for the next few weeks the boy is here. He’s gotten used to being on his own.

Still, he couldn’t have left him standing there at the crossroads, hitching east with no money or plan. A few weeks here and Steve will send him off on a bus instead, with enough to stay in a hotel when he gets there, enough to land on his feet. It’ll be good, Steve thinks, another way he can put some good into the world not as Captain America, but just as Steve Rogers. 

The thought of Captain America sends his mind hurtling back to the letter in his jacket pocket with the force of a bullet. 

He forces himself to go to his room, shutting his door before he fishes it out, smoothing the creases from being shoved in his coat. 

There’s no mistaking Bucky’s handwriting. 

His eyes linger over his name, the address, the postal code, as if he can glean something of the contents without actually opening it. 

But eventually he has to open it. 

It’s one thin page, Bucky’s chicken scratch handwriting cramped and hurried. 

_Dear Steve,  
I’m sorry I haven’t written. I didn’t know what to say. Still don’t. _

_I know you’ve got to be where you are right now—to put Captain America and the war behind you and figure out how to just be a good man again. I need to do the same. But I—_

There is a phrase that has been scratched out so thoroughly that Steve can’t tell what Bucky had begun to write, even holding it up to the light. 

_I didn’t tell you everything about the time before you arrived. I wanted to, but the time just was never right. I hope it will be, one day. And I know you want me to be there, so we can do this all together, like we’ve done everything. But I think I need to do this one on my own. It’s like Morita said—sometime you get to the part where fighting is so easy you know you got to stop, and start trying to live again._

_I want to be alive again the next time I see you Stevie. You deserve that. And a lot better. But at least it’s somewhere to start._

_Bucky_

_P.S. You never had to try to be good after the fighting was over Steve. You only ever had to be you._

*

**September, 1945**

They are dug in for surveillance, overlooking what will prove to be the last of the active Hydra bases on their list (though they aren’t sure of it at the moment). 

The bunker is set back into a cliff side, protected from a sea-born assault by a long rocky peninsula, and leaving any attack by land precariously exposed on the rock. 

It’s a tricky operation, even for a unit by now so well-versed in Hydra’s tricks. 

So Steve’s ordered a seventy-two hour scouting mission, just observation for now, before they decide how to approach. 

The men are split up strategically in groups of four, on a rotating sleep shift of two at a time. 

He’s currently holding down a position with Jim Morita, Dernier, and Bucky. Bucky and Dernier are huddled at the back of the small cave they’re in—really more of a stone ledge with an overhang—trying to get their sleep in. 

Steve assigned his own team the spot he thinks is most likely how they’ll make their assault. It’s not the most direct by any means, but he’s got a good feeling about their ability to get close enough to use Dernier’s explosives before the base is alerted to their presence. So far his suspicions are proving right, in that no one has come even close to spotting their location. And the noise of the wind through this particular canyon is so fierce that the sound of a stealthy approach should be impossible to detect. 

Morita has the binoculars pressed to his eyes, as he and Steve lie side by side on their bellies, looking down the cliff. 

“Anything?” Steve asks. 

“Nah, same two fuckers patrolling that main wall. No changes. Man what’s the chance they got dumb all of a sudden on us?”

Steve laughs. “I don’t know—probably not very high. So eyes sharp.” 

“Yes sir!” 

They are still, waiting. Then a wicked gust of air rips along the rock, and Morita’s teeth begin to chatter a little. 

“ _Fucking_ cold,” he says, through gritted teeth, never lowering the binoculars, “you know I don’t think I was ever cold in my entire fucking life before I came to Europe.” 

“You’re from California right?”

“Yeah. But not the places you’re thinking. No fuckin’ palm trees in Fresno.” He pauses. “No cold though either.”

“It must be nice.”

“Mmm,” Morita grunts. 

“You not planning on going back there if we ever get done with this?” Steve asks with genuine interest. 

“Oh I am. Just not sure if nice is the right way to describe how I feel about it.” 

Steve’s eyebrows furrow. “So—why go back there?”

Morita sighs heavily, lowering the binoculars and rubbing his eyes. He offers them to Steve. 

“You wanna take a look?” 

Steve accepts them, twiddling the focus just a bit—his vision is much sharper over distance since the serum, so he always has to adjust the sights a little when trading off with anyone else. He quickly locates the main gate and begins to scan the surrounding walls for movement or weak spots. 

“You know, my parents and my sister got rounded up and sent into a camp.” Morita says, quietly. “I’d already been in Europe on the line a month when I found out. They just got released home after VJ day.”

Steve recalls the day they’d found out about Japan’s surrender. No one had been particularly enthused—it didn’t mean much for their fight—but Morita had been especially stony-faced. Now he understood. 

“I—no. I didn’t know that.” 

“Yeah.” He pauses. “So I got no special love for Fresno right now.” 

“Then why stay there? Why not go someplace better, all of you together?”

Morita laughs bitterly and rubs a rough hand over his face.

“Sorry Cap, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. There isn’t any place _better_. Every place did it. And if they didn’t, they wanted to.”

Steve chews on his lip, not sure what to say. Morita’s right—he has no idea what he’s talking about. He can’t really imagine what the other man is feeling. 

“But that’s why we go back.” Morita says eventually, into the uncomfortable silence. “We go back because it’s our _home_ whether they like it or not. We go back because that’s the next fight, man. The real one. And I gotta tell you—fighting with guns is so fuckin’ easy.” He waves his hand down at the crouching Hyrda base. “Cutting this shit up is easy. I could do it forever. Sometime I hope we’ll have to. Because living is hard. Being in a fight where the only weapon you got is just _being_ and not backing down is hard.”

In the far end of the ledge, one of the two sleeping bodies stirs softly under their shared blanket. Steve knows it’s Bucky, because he knows all the varied sounds of Bucky’s restlessness, but he goes quiet again still apparently asleep. 

Morita holds out a hand for the binoculars, and Steve gives them to him readily, taking in what he’s saying—what he is expecting when and if he gets home, so different from anything Steve faces. 

“You can only keep fighting so long once it gets easy like this. That’s when you know the real fight’s going to be when you have to start trying like hell to be alive again instead.” 

*

**October, 1946**

Steve writes a letter to the return address Bucky wrote on the envelope. It simply says: 

_Come to Washington, whatever shape you’re in. I haven’t figured out a damn thing besides that I want you to be here. I hope that’s good enough for you._

He receives no reply. 

The time for picking the apples comes and goes, under Teddy’s capable leadership. He’d never take the credit for it, but Steve gives it to him anyway to his chagrin. Dottie comes up for a whole Saturday and teaches him how to press them for cider, and takes away several baskets with the promise of apple sauce. It’s satisfying work, and he can’t help but go into the barn and check up on the big sealed bottles of cider set tidily all along the shelves, admiring their work. The rest Frank takes for him, insisting that Steve let him sell them along with his crop. Steve spends many minutes in an infuriating kind of reverse negotiation to make sure Frank takes a reasonable cut of the sale at least. 

Steve builds a chicken coop in November, and Teddy laughs at him and tells him there won’t be pullets for him to fill it with until the spring. He doesn’t mind. He’d awoken that morning from a dream in which he and Bucky were back in Brooklyn, lying on the floor of his mother’s apartment—his head in Bucky’s lap, the sun hallowing Bucky’s dark hair as he leaned down over him and he’d…well then he’d woken up. And he’d just kind of had the urge to build something. 

As November wanes, and winter begins to set in in earnest, he knows he won’t have enough to keep Teddy busy for very much longer. It’s already been several weeks more than the few he’d offered to put him up for. 

But he finds that he doesn’t just want to give him enough for a bus east into Tacoma after all. 

The kid is smart, is the main problem. Probably too smart for his own good. But whether that’s true or not, he’s too smart to go scrounge up some typing job in the nearest city just because it’s a little bigger than here. He’s whip sharp and observant, and Steve’s conscience has begun to pain him about it. 

Pain him, because Steve knows exactly who could use a smart, observant, unassuming young man who’s eager to learn. He just doesn’t know if sending Teddy to Peggy Carter is what a good man would do. 

He struggles with himself over it through the middle part of November. 

“Teddy,” he asks, one night as they’re both reading in front of the fireplace. At least, Teddy’s reading. Steve is mostly brooding. “What would you want to do after you leave here, if you could do anything?”

Teddy turns down the corner of the book he’s reading—some dense history of the Balkans. 

“Anything?”

“Yeah—money’s no problem, you can go anywhere, and they’ll hire you on sight.”

“Jeez if I’ve got it that made I dunno. Maybe I’d go travel—work somewhere in Europe for a while.” He presses his lips together tight, thinking about it. “I’d like to help people, if I could. I didn’t—I wanted to enlist, ya know? Just got so late in the war by the time I was eighteen and I’m so small they didn’t want me.”

Steve allows himself a small, sad smile, knowing Teddy won’t see it behind his beard and think he’s making fun. If only Teddy knew. 

“Helping people doesn’t always mean muscle, kid.” 

Teddy shrugs, and says more confidently than Steve ever felt, “I know. It’s just finding the other folks that know it too to give you a shot.”

It’s profoundly true, and profoundly pointed given Steve’s dilemma. It’s as if Teddy knew exactly what to say to remind Steve of just who it was that gave him a shot before he became _this_. 

It’s enough to decide him. 

The next morning, after they’ve done their normal breakfast and cleaned up, Steve stops Teddy before he can go out into the yard. 

“Ted, hang on a minute. I want to show you something.” 

Teddy looks confused, but sits back down at the table, expectant. Steve feels unaccountably nervous as he begins to lay several items on the table in front of him. The evidence of a former life, liberated from a locked desk drawer to help him introduce himself all over again. 

Teddy frowns, picking up the photograph. 

“It’s Captain America’s Howling Commandos, I don’t understand what—” 

Steve places another piece on the table. His Captain’s insignia, and the Howlers’ specially designed pin. 

Teddy picks these up with an even deeper frown now. “Are these yours? You were a Howler?” he runs his fingers over the double bars of his Captain’s pin. “Captain… _Captain_ Steve Rogers—you—” 

Steve watches him mouth the name, his face suddenly very pale. Then he looks back up at Steve and blinks several times before he speaks. 

“No you aren’t.” He says. 

And Steve laughs, laughs hard. Because he’s tried so feverishly to keep anyone from guessing, and now he wants Teddy to know and it’s the best possible kind of compliment to his efforts this last year to blend in, to be just a person. Just Steve. 

He spreads his hands with a grin. “Sorry to disappoint, kid.” 

Teddy glares at him. Then he looks down at the photo. Then back again. By the time he’s done staring at Steve in the photo—a smiling, Captain America at his most Captain-y version of Steve—he slumps back into his chair with s noise of defeat. 

“You’re Captain America.”

“Not anymore.”

Teddy purses his lips, an annoyed expression that looks more like the spitfire Steve’s gotten used to around the farm these past two months. 

“That,” he says, sternly, “seems like splitting hairs.” 

Steve grins again, slapping his knee. “You got me there, kid.” 

“What are you doing…here?” Teddy asks, looking around the worn, scrubbed farmhouse kitchen helplessly. “Wasn’t there still— _stuff_ to do?”

“Plenty of stuff to do—but not for Captain America. He did what he was made for. It was time to retire him. The rest is for people a lot better suited to it—people who are people, not weapons. People like you, Teddy.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Look, I asked you what you’d do if you could do anything, right?”

“Yeah...” he says, suspicious. 

“So I know somebody I think you ought to meet.” 

“Somebody from…then?” he asks, gesturing at the photograph. 

“I guess you could say that. Although she was a friend of Steve Rogers first and is still a friend to me now.” 

“Okay…so what? Why tell me this?”

“Because I can’t put you on a bus to Tacoma. It’s not right. Not with your brains and what you can do if you put them to the right use.” He stops, taking in the set expression on Teddy’s face, and smiles. “Anyway, why’d I tell you the rest? I figured you’d probably want an explanation for why there’s gonna be a private plane waiting for you at the airstrip. And I didn’t think anything short of ‘I’m Captain America’ would really cut it.”

Teddy gapes, once again trying to take in the information. “Wh—why? To where?”

“Because I called in a favor. And because you’ve got a job interview in Washington—Washington D.C.—tomorrow at ten.” 

He hands Teddy a sealed envelope, addressed to Peggy Carter. He already spoke to her about this, three days ago on the phone in front of the post office. But he wants to be sure she remembers all the good stuff he’d said to convince her to take on an untried trainee. 

“You take this with you and give it to Agent Carter the minute you walk in, got it? And don’t let her scare you.” 

His face softens a little, and he squeezes Teddy’s boney shoulder affectionately. 

“You’re gonna do great things kid. Don’t forget to write while you’re out saving the world.” 

 

The rest of the winter passes slowly, and, Steve is loath to admit, a bit lonesomely once Teddy is gone. But he gets a hurried postcard from him just after Christmas from London, where Steve reads between the lines to see that Peggy is putting him through as ruthless a training as he ever faced under her keen eyes. Teddy sounds elated by it all. 

He tacks the postcard up on the kitchen wall above the toaster. After a moment of hesitation, he puts the photograph of the Howling Commandos up next to it. Two pieces of his life that don’t feel so much as _before_ and _after_ anymore as simply _then_ and _now_. For some reason the difference feels important. 

In January, nearly a year since Steve came to live on the farm, the skies decide to open for a ruthless two weeks of icy rain. The deluge doesn’t let up, turning the countryside into a muddy grey mess and shrouding the Cascades in a constant swathe of dense storm clouds. 

Steve doesn’t sleep well when it’s raining. It’s too much noise for him to ignore, no matter how hard he tries. 

He takes to prowling the house and its perimeter, hunting down leaks in the roof and shoring up the garden beds when the water threatens to carry away good topsoil. He’s in the barn around midnight sometime in the second week of storms, piling sandbags against the north wall, when he hears a new sound amidst the crashing raindrops. There’s a small, pitiful keening noise. 

Steve drops the last sandbag he’s holding onto the pile, snatching up his flashlight from the ground to look for the source of the noise. 

He doesn’t find it in the barn, so he pulls up the hood of his raincoat to brave the downpour outside. 

The sound seems to be getting less frequent, softer, and Steve feels a sense of urgency pressing in. He begins to move with a kind of speed he hasn’t needed to use in a long time. 

He eventually finds two crying, tiny puppies, shivering in a corner of his empty chicken coop. Their eyes aren’t even open yet. Steve looks around, but there’s no mother in sight, and he doesn’t think they’ll last long out here in a night like this. So he scoops them up, cradling them in his hands, and shelters them in his jacket before running back to the house. 

Steve is out of his element, and for the very first time since he’s lived in this house he wishes he hadn’t been so stubborn about putting in a telephone. He’s positive Dottie would know exactly what to do. 

He squares his shoulders, and takes a deep breath. Steve’s a field-tested commander and has done his share of battle triage. He can figure this out. 

The first thing seems to be to get them warm. Their little bodies are so cold and shaking, without even any real fur yet to help them out. He leaves them curled in his coat for the moment, shifting his arm across his stomach to make sure they won’t slip. Then one-handed, he scoops up a basket sitting on the floor by the front door—Dottie had used it to bring him bread earlier in the week, and he’s been meaning to return it. A fraying blanket from Teddy’s old bed fits it perfectly. 

Steve takes both back into the living room, and sets about making a fire, gently, but as quickly as he can. 

Soon he has a roaring blaze in his fireplace, and the two little bodies are nestled into the blanket in the basket as close to the hearth as he dares. He pulls off his sweater, quickly overheating in front of the fire, but he stays where he is. Soon the puppies’ shivering starts to subside, and when Steve runs a careful finger down their silky backs they don’t feel cold to the touch any more. 

Almost as soon as the warmth returns to them, so does the sad, tinny crying that had caught Steve’s ear in the barn. It doesn’t require ever having had a dog before to guess that they’re hungry without their mother. 

His success at getting them warm gives Steve confidence at the new obstacle, and he leaves them for a moment to retrieve a bottle of milk from the kitchen. He’s nearly stumped then, trying to figure out how to give it to them—without their eyes even open yet it doesn’t seem like they’ll be able to manage if he just puts in down in a bowl. Maybe tomorrow he can go to town and get a baby bottle…but that won’t help tonight. He frowns, thinking over the problem. 

Eventually, he discovers that a corner of the blanket, twisted up and dipped into the milk, seems to do the trick. He grins broadly as the puppies find it with their little noses, tiny pink mouths catching onto the dripping wool. 

The pair of them begin to cry and whine nearly every hour, and Steve patiently soaks the corner of the blanket with milk for them each time. He has no idea if it’s close enough to the right kind or anything to be giving them cow’s milk—but they seem to like it. 

By the time morning rolls around, grey and just as wet as the night was, Steve’s been sitting up with them entirely without sleep. It’s the first time in over a year that he’s been glad for his ability to go without it. And as he listens to the little snorts and sleepy noises the puppies make, he thinks that it’s by far the best reason he’s ever had to use it. 

The thought makes him smile. Steve from Brooklyn had never had a dog—probably couldn’t have ever imagined it. And he couldn’t have stayed up all night after trudging through the rain to take care of them, he’d have been down with pneumonia in a heartbeat. 

Steve goes to the kitchen for a piece of paper, and writes at the top: _Things I couldn’t do before that aren’t fighting_. 

Underneath, he writes _stay up rescuing rain storm puppies_ as the first item. He considers, then adds _build chicken coop_ next. He pins the unfinished list alongside the postcard and photograph to add more to later. 

When he’d been given this new body, it had been the answer to the one thing he wanted more than anything: to join the fight. More than that, it gave him something he’d never had before, which was the ability to _win_ his fights. Steve from before hadn’t ever known what it was like to land a really successful punch without taking six or seven in return. But Steve from before also didn’t know what it felt like to break a man’s spine with a backhand either. He’d wanted to fight bullies, and had he ever. 

He thinks, sometimes, of his naïve statement that night to Erskine— _I don’t want to kill anyone; I don’t like bullies_. Since then he’d killed hundreds and more. Bullies, and worse, too. He doesn’t regret it. But he does wonder sometimes what it makes him now. 

His life changed so much that day—after he’d been given the serum he’d immediately been plunged into a new role, new places, new faces. It had been easier then to embrace the fact of his new frame and form, when everything else had felt surreal anyway. But he realizes now that he’s back, trying to find a new kind of normal, that he’d never really imagined living an actual life in it. That it wouldn’t all just fade with the war years. That he wouldn’t leave it behind with his army uniform and dog tags when the fighting was done.  
Steve looks again at the list, jaw tight. He promises himself to add to it. He needs to remind himself of all the good things he’s capable of that he wasn’t before. They weren’t things that ever entered his mind back when Erskine had offered him this change—there was nothing in his head then but war—but they’re important things.

He needs to remember to find and do more of them until little by little, _winning fights_ is just one entry on a long list of things that this still new, sometimes still unfamiliar body can do. 

*

**November, 1945**

Steve sits at a table in a dim pub in London, feeling stiff and uncomfortable in his dress uniform for the first time in months. 

Falsworth is in the seat beside him, absently watching over the corner where the rest of the Howlers are engaged in an impassioned darts competition. 

It reminds Steve so acutely of a similar bar, with these same men (most of them—he’d got most of them through), all cleaned up and glowing with post battle euphoria when he’d asked them to join him. But at the same time, that night couldn’t be more different from this one, more distant from who they are now. They’ve been fighting, almost without pause, for so long. 

And yet it seems that they have reached the end. 

All of Peggy Carter and the other agents’ best information tells them that Hydra is destroyed. There are no more bases to attack. VH Day. The scattered remnants that are left aren’t the type to be taken down by soldiers—it’s spy’s work now to finish it.

He glances at Falsworth, who turns a tumbler of something amber colored in his hand idly, but isn’t drinking it. Steve can’t tell if he’s drunk. Most of the others are. Falsworth’s words aren’t slurring, but his eyes are a little glittering, and his shoulders slumped. 

Falsworth catches Steve eyeing him, and gives him a droll smile that somehow manages to be a smile even though it turns down at the corners. Steve guesses it’s because Falsworth’s smiles are all in his eyes, and the crinkling of heavy crow’s feet around them. 

“Happy, Captain?” he asks.

“No good reason today to be unhappy,” Steve replies, lifting his beer. The taste is fine, though the Brits serve it warm, and he likes to have a drink in hand at least for the appearance of participating when the others are getting drunk. 

“Ah, of course not.” Falsworth replies with a smirk. 

But the man is almost always smirking. So Steve isn’t sure whether he should make anything of it or not. 

He knows he isn’t the only one of their little band to find Falsworth a little sphinxlike. There’s something undeniably…British about him, aside from the accent. He has something of the famed stiff upper lip—if instead of a stiff upper lip you found a laconic, dry irony. 

Steve had mentioned it to Bucky once, how he couldn’t quite figure Falsworth out. Never found quite the right word for his particular brand of unflappable humor. 

“He’s a fucking snob, Steve,” Bucky had said with a snort. “That’s what you’re dancing around. Pretty sure his dad has a title in front of his name that ain’t mister.”

Steve isn’t sure if Bucky was right about Falsworth. And if he was, Steve isn’t sure if he cares as much about it as Bucky does. Bucky had always been more aware of being poor than he had. Bucky who liked clothes and to go out dancing and to do things that required money. Steve hadn’t cared much about what money could do besides letting him not have to think so much about money. 

But he can’t deny that Falsworth does have a kind of cool surety in himself that seems like it must have come from being raised without fear or want. 

“No reason not to be,” Falsworth repeats, softly, apparently to himself. Then he cuts a sharp look at Steve. “What are you dreaming of now Captain? What’s next now we’ve all lost our shot at dying heroically for king and country?” He tilts his glass at Steve, “apologies, congress and country.”

Steve gives a half-smile, shaking his head. He doesn’t really have an answer to that, but it doesn’t seem like Falsworth is really looking for one. The man lifts his drink, tipping back the contents in one swallow, setting it back on the table. He watches the one large ice cube at the bottom as it melts, looking morose. 

Steve lets his eyes roam over the bar, before landing where they really want to be. He avoids seeking out that familiar set of shoulders too often, knowing it wouldn’t be received well if Bucky thinks he’s checking up on him. But every time he hears Bucky’s laugh, or one of the other guys saying his name, it requires a conscious effort not to turn his head and find him in the crowd. 

“Hmm,” Falsworth’s voice startles Steve, “yes I had rather wondered.” 

He says it as if Steve has answered his earlier question, and Steve shifts a little nervously in his chair. He’s not sure what Falsworth saw or thinks he sees, but his tone is too understanding for Steve’s comfort. So he changes the subject, grasping at the first thought that comes to his mind. 

“You ever noticed how all the time we were out there, there were some guys that’d say _when_ we get home and some guys who said _if_? When you’d ask ’em about after, I mean.” He keeps his tone light. 

Falsworth’s mouth twists down in another ironic smile. “A keen observation, Captain.” 

“So which one were you, Falsworth? You surprised to be back here?”

The crinkles around Falsworth’s eyes fall out of their smile, and he looks down at the ice in his glass again, thoughtful. When he speaks, he doesn’t answer the question and the words sound like they are coming from a long way off. 

“You know, I had a sweetheart—before all this started. Before the Blitz and joining up to fight the good fight for jolly old England.”

Steve frowns, trying to remember if he’d ever heard Falsworth talk about her before. Lots of the guys had photographs they kept in breast pockets or in their packs, a comforting face when things got tough, something to look forward to. He’d kept Peggy’s picture in the top of his compass, even after things… _weren’t_ between them anymore. It had still been nice to be reminded of the world outside of the dirty, bloody skirmishes and foxholes. 

“Oh?” he asks. 

Falsworth nods, still looking down at the glass as if the ice won’t melt properly without careful supervision. 

“Mm. Of course we made all the promises—for when the war was over. Plans and dreams and all the usual things.” He clears his throat. “Well, we weren’t exactly going to be stepping up the aisle any time soon but…there were other hopes.” 

Steve isn’t following, but he tries not to show it on his face because it seems like Falsworth is saying something significant even if he’s not sure what it is. 

Falsworth lets out a long breath. “But, then he caught a German bullet in the chest in Market Garden, and that was the end of those. I got the letter from his sister about a week before Hydra picked me up.” 

He does look up now, meeting Steve’s eyes directly with a wan smile. 

“So no, Captain—I didn’t say _when_ and I didn’t say _if_. The only thing that mattered to me in this war ended a long time ago and I…well I never really had any intention of making it back here.” 

Steve is stunned, full of half-formed questions and sentences of sympathy and more. All he can manage is, “And now?”

Falsworth takes a deep breath, looking out over the pub but seeing something else entirely, eyes distant. 

“Now? Now I still have no plan. It’s hard to plan when hope is dead. But I think one night I shall simply begin walking, and not stop until something stops me, whatever the case may be.” 

“Is there—” Steve doesn’t know how to ask the question he desperately wants the answer to. “Is there nothing…nothing else?”

Falsworth looks back at Steve again, intent this time, searching perhaps for the question under the question—trying to see in Steve’s face all the things he can’t bring himself to ask. 

“There’s nothing worth having—nothing worth doing—if love is gone, Captain. I think you of all people know that. People think that the opposite of war is peace, but it isn’t. It’s love… and so. No, there is nothing left in peacetime for me.”

Steve’s mouth is open but there are no words to pour into the broken silence between them. He closes it again. Falsworth smiles. Then he rises to his feet, a little unsteadily. He stops next to Steve’s chair, where Steve is sitting frozen, and places a hand on his shoulder. Steve looks up at him.

“Good luck, Captain.” His eyes flicker to somewhere across the pub, but Steve doesn’t follow the look. He’s too afraid to. “I hope you find that peacetime suits you.” 

He gives Steve’s shoulder a squeeze, and then moves away to the open door of the pub. 

As he disappears into the dark of the London street, Steve watches him pull off his Red Devil beret and crumple it into his jacket pocket. 

*

**Spring, 1947**

Steve spends nearly a month bottle feeding the two puppies, until Dottie declares that they’re old enough (and fat enough) to eat real food on their own. 

They’re brothers, of uncertain breed, with dappled fur and floppy ears. They’re nearly identical, but for the fact that one is grey-with-brown dapples and the other is more brown-with-grey. They pad around the farmhouse following Steve on feet that are at least three times too big for them, and Dottie predicts that they’ll be quite big boys when they’re fully grown. 

He names them Charlie and Buster, and remembers the happy afternoons as a kid when he and Bucky would sneak into the movie theater to watch the old silent pictures. Buster Keaton had always been Steve’s favorite (because he was funny), but Bucky liked Charlie Chaplin best (because he was funny _and_ he always got the girl). 

The pair sleep at first on the end of his bed, and then later, as the weeks go by and they get bigger and bigger, sprawling across the whole right side of it. 

Spring begins to show signs of creeping in, in little yellow buds at the tips of the tree branches and blue sky pushing out the grey. Steve buys six checkered hens to inhabit his chicken coop, and spends a whole afternoon making Charlie and Buster sit with him inside it until he’s sure they know chickens are friends and not food. 

He spends several days in the middle of March mucking around in his muddy garden beds, pulling out last year’s dead plants and making room for new ones. The dogs are overjoyed, leaping and wrestling around him until they are both caked completely with mud. The next week when he plants his runner beans and spinach, he makes sure they stay out of the beds where the dirt is freshly churned and particularly tempting.

He adds two more items to his list of things that he couldn’t have done before the serum: _repair a neighbor’s broken fence_ , and _climb a tall tree_. 

The former he learns after one of the bigger March storms knocks a tree branch into Frank and Dottie’s pasture fence. It’s satisfying to know, a year after Frank took pity on him, that he can help now in return. And that Frank hardly had to give him any direction as he got the heavy crossbeams seated and fixed in place. 

The latter he discovers in his own back yard. One day Steve is working in the orchard, and realizes that he’s never really gone further into the property than where the end of the cultivated garden stops. He laughs, realizing it’s just because the thought had literally never occurred to him. That he could walk into the woods that surround his house any time he wants. It’s so far from anything that was ever available to him. The trees of his childhood had mostly lived in the centers of sidewalks, surrounded by little wrought iron cages. Not that he would’ve been able to climb one anyway, but still. 

So he does. Nearly every day, he takes to rambling around the countryside with Charlie and Buster, scrambling up hills and splashing down through streams. He climbs trees just to see how high he can go (the answer is mixed—he may be strong and agile, but he’s also _heavy_ ). He doesn’t have to worry about getting tired or catching cold and it’s something he’s never felt before. Once in a while, he’s reminded of the forests across France and Germany that he and the commandos camped their way through. But he isn’t occupied by thoughts of getting shot or found by the enemy here—and the trees are whole and healthy and unmarred by shells or mortars (though some days he can’t shake the feeling that he should find cover anyway, and shadows of imagined Nazis dart at the edges of his vision). 

He thinks about coming out here with his army pop-tent one of these nights when it’s warmer, to sleep peacefully under the whispering trees. 

They’d known a family on their street in Brooklyn who went on a camping trip every summer upstate. It had been fascinating and foreign watching them load up their station wagon with all the mysterious equipment and drive off into the unknown. He and Bucky had discussed at length and concluded that camping was stupid (with the confidence of two kids who’d never been out of the city). 

He wonders what Bucky would think about it now. 

That thought is on his mind as he climbs the grassy slope from the edge of the woods toward the farmhouse. His hands are full of vivid blue larkspur, which he’d found growing in a sunny clearing. Steve’s discovered that he likes having colorful things in the house, and ever since Dottie had brought him poinsettias at Christmastime he’s been finding bright things to keep in the milk jug on his kitchen table. 

Charlie and Buster are ranged out ahead of him, tongues lolling out of happy dog smiles, panting. They’ve gotten several inches taller just the last couple weeks, he thinks, loping around on long legs. 

Both of their ears go alert at the same time, standing momentarily still with noses pointed toward the house. The next minute they’re barking, tearing up the yard and ignoring as Steve tries vainly to call them back. 

He picks up his pace to make sure they aren’t scaring some salesman—the only people who really come all the way out here, besides Frank and Dottie who the dogs know well. The boys are both pushovers, really, and wouldn’t attack anyone, but they’re big enough to be intimidating to anybody who doesn’t know that. 

Steve is in the garden before he can see the figure coming up the dirt lane to the front of the house. He spots him just as Charlie and Buster reach him, barking and jumping in circles around him in a flurry of paws and fur. The figure drops down into a crouch to greet them before Steve can see who it might be, disappearing behind two wriggling dog bodies. 

Then he straightens, and Steve couldn’t mistake him anywhere. 

He’d know the line of those shoulders and that open stance in pitch darkness or on the moon or even if he hadn’t seen them in a hundred years. 

No matter how much either of them changed, no matter the time or distance, he could never not know Bucky Barnes. 

Bucky is holding the handle of a small suitcase in one hand, and he’s wearing his olive green army uniform. His eyes follow the dogs as they turn and run back toward Steve, barking and grinning to announce the presence of a new friend. Steve can’t read Bucky’s expression beneath his jauntily tipped hat, but Bucky starts walking toward him. 

Steve is stood stock still in the midst of his garden beds as Bucky makes his way up the lane. He’s about a hundred yards away when Steve comes to his senses, and begins to walk toward him, the realization dawning that he’s _here_. 

He breaks into a run, scattering bright blue larkspur from his arms. 

*

**December, 1945**

Steve clears his throat, hoping the sound will finally force him to say out loud the sentence that has been weighing down his tongue for the last wordless hour. 

“I bought a farm. Out in Washington.” 

Steve drops the statement into the otherwise quiet room without turning around from his desk, where he’s pretending to finish paperwork on the Howlers’ last mission. 

There’s a long pause, and Steve wouldn’t be certain Bucky even heard him except for the hairs on the nape of his neck are prickling like Bucky’s trying to stare a hole through the back of his head. 

“What?” Bucky asks at last. 

They’re sharing a room in the latest of the mediocre hotel lodgings provided by the army while they decide what to do with them. Steve is still keeping up the bureaucratic elements of his job, even if it feels pretty useless now that the fighting is over. Now that his own time with the Howlers is coming rapidly to an end. He’s completing Jones’ discharge papers and recommendations for commendation now, squeezed into the small desk chair tucked next to the bed he picked as his. 

Bucky’s sitting up in the other bed, an English newspaper spread across his lap where he’s been paging through it. 

Steve still doesn’t turn to look at him straight on, but he can imagine exactly the expression that accompanies Bucky’s tone. 

“I bought a farm.” He repeats. “In Washington state.” 

“Yeah I heard you—I meant what the hell, Steve? What are you gonna do on a farm?”

“I don’t know…farm stuff I guess.” He sighs. “Be outside. Be somewhere new.”

Bucky curses softly under his breath, something Steve can’t hear specifically, and shifts the newspaper around. Steve can hear as he swings his legs off the bed and sets his feet on the floor, but he doesn’t stand or some closer. 

Just waits. 

“I can’t stay here, Buck.” Steve says at last. 

There’s a harsh sigh. “I know.” 

“And I can’t go back to Brooklyn.” 

“I know.” 

“Gotta start new…start somewhere.”

“I know.” 

Now Steve does turn in his chair, and he tries to ask the next question without pleading, but he’s not sure he manages it. 

“Will you come with me?”

Bucky drops his head into his hands, running them through his hair. When he looks up to meet Steve’s gaze there’s a tension around the corners of his eyes, something like hurt or hope or grief. 

“No.”

The word hits Steve like a punch in the gut. Like nothing has hit him for a long time, like he thought he’d grown immune to being hit. 

“Why?” It comes out softly, so that his voice won’t break. 

Bucky stands, the newspaper scattering to the floor in a flurry of motion, and moves to the narrow window between their two beds. He rests his forehead on the glass pane, looking down into the street, and doesn’t answer. 

“We could—it could be like before, Buck. Just you and me, no war—we’d figure it out. Like we always did.”

It’s the best pitch he has. Bucky has had such a haunted look, even more since they came out of the field. They never acknowledged the night by the fire when something—whatever it was had happened. So Steve has done his best to stay the same, reliable friend he always was, not to give Bucky any reason to shy away from him now. 

Bucky just shakes his head again, eyes squeezed shut in some emotion Steve doesn’t recognize and can’t name. He knows he should just let it drop, leave it, that he’s pushing dangerously close to the line that neither of them has ever quite been able or willing to cross. But he can’t help himself. 

“Don’t you—I mean, aren’t you ready to stop with all this? Be something else? I can’t—you know I can’t go back to Brooklyn, but I thought…I still want it to be…to be you and me. Do—don’t you?”

Bucky turns away from the window, facing Steve, letting his hands hang loose at his sides. A muscle jumps in his jaw. 

“You don’t know what you’re asking Stevie.” 

Steve swallows, trying to force away the growing lump in his throat. He doesn’t know what that means, and so maybe Bucky is right—maybe he doesn’t know what he’s asking. There’s not a lot he’s sure he knows right now. The only thing he’s sure of, has ever really been sure of is…

“I want you to be there. With me.”

Bucky closes his eyes again, a crease between his eyebrows. 

“I can’t.” He says. 

Steve drops his eyes now, too, afraid that they’re going to betray him by welling up or saying all the things he can’t quite say with his mouth. He could ask Bucky why, what he means—but he feels like his answers would only heap more hurt on top of the pile currently sitting on his chest, threatening to crush him. 

“I’m going anyway, Buck. I’ve got to.” He says instead, the words sounding hollow and hoarse to his own ears. 

Bucky nods. “I know, Stevie. I know. I—” he stops before finishing whatever thought had started, turning quickly with his hand to his face, and slumping back down onto his bed. 

Steve watches him, the rigid line of his back, for a long moment, trying desperately to think of something to say to change his mind. Or to change his own and make it not matter so much. 

Eventually he gives up, turning back to the small desk and his sheaf of paperwork. 

He stays hunched over them, head in his hands, listening to Bucky’s shallow and wakeful breathing from across the room for a long, long time. 

*

**Spring 1947**

Steve doesn’t slow as he reaches Bucky, but Bucky stops moving toward him, dropping the suitcase and opening his arms. 

He stumbles back a little, and his hat falls from his head as Steve crashes into him. Steve’s arms wrap tight around Bucky’s neck, and Bucky’s come up to wrap around Steve’s waist. Their faces bury in one another’s neck, and Bucky is laughing and it’s the best sound Steve has ever heard. 

“Easy there, big guy,” he says, jokingly, “your hugs are a lot more lethal these days.” 

But he doesn’t pull away, and neither does Steve. Steve isn’t sure if he’s laughing too, or if his eyes are crinkled against tears instead because it doesn’t feel like there’s much of a difference between the two. 

Bucky sighs, softly, and Steve can only feel it in the slight press of his chest clasped tightly against his own. 

Steve doesn’t want to let go—could never let go, could be entirely satisfied living here in this moment forever. 

But the dogs are barking excitedly, dancing around them, and Bucky is drawing away and Steve has to let him go or else cling to him past the point of awkward. So he lets Bucky pull back, but not all the way—Steve keeps a strong hand gripped on his shoulder, unwilling to sever the connection yet. Because Bucky’s face is open, vulnerable with something—hope maybe—and for a moment it feels like all those walls that had come between them and _this_ are gone. That they’re only a word or a gesture from finally, _finally_ making it concrete and undeniable. 

But then Bucky looks down at the dogs, and when he looks back up he has a smile on his face—but it’s a careful one, cocky and guarded. And the moment has passed before Steve could even realize it was there. 

“You sick your guard dogs on me, pal?” Bucky asks, cheerfully, bending down to pick up his hat and brush the dirt off of it. 

Steve laughs, tightly, still trying to catch his breath. “Yeah they’re real killers.”

“I noticed,” Bucky says, drily, as Buster swipes a slobbery kiss across the back of his free hand. “Didn’t realize I should be prepared for the full welcoming committee.” 

Steve chuckles. “Would’ve brought out the whole bandwagon if we’d known you were coming, Buck.” He hesitates. “You didn’t…you never wrote?”

Bucky looks down again at the dogs, giving Charlie a pat on the head. Steve can’t tell if he’s avoiding his eyes on purpose. 

“Sorry. I was going to—to tell you I was coming. But then I thought…it was easier just to show up and hope you were here.” He ends on a weak laugh like it’s a joke, but Steve knows it isn’t. 

“Yeah yeah, ya jerk. We both know you just love to make a dramatic entrance.” He smiles, and slings his arm around Bucky’s shoulders in a familiar gesture that still somehow feels different. “Come on inside, I’ll show you around.” 

Bucky lets out a small huff of breath, and Steve isn’t sure, but he thinks he presses his cheek briefly against Steve’s shoulder. 

“Thanks Stevie.”

“You got it Buck.”

 

“What do you think?” Steve asks at last, as they stand in the orchard in the last of the sun’s dying rays for the day. 

Bucky has been largely quiet through Steve’s enthusiastic tour of the house and his garden and the rest of the farm, sometimes looking thoughtful, sometimes with a small smile tucked in the corners of his mouth. But Steve desperately wants to know what he thinks, and he can’t help the earnest note in his voice that says _this is me now and this is my home and do you like it I need you to like it please like it._

Bucky’s eyes are on the apple trees, all pink with new blossoms. He closes his eyes and breaths in deeply, and Steve watches the subtly shifting expression on his face. 

“It’s beautiful.” Bucky says, opening his eyes to look at Steve. “It suits you.” But his smile is a little sad, and Steve doesn’t know what that means. 

“Thanks. You hungry? I can actually cook a couple things now, if you want dinner.” 

Bucky nods in agreement. Steve reaches out, by habit, to put an arm around his neck or grip his shoulder, but Bucky slips away ahead of him—whether evading him purposefully or by accident Steve isn’t sure. Bucky has been keeping a little space between them since their initial hug in the lane, but Steve thought maybe it was just him taking in the newness of the surroundings. 

Now he frowns at Bucky’s retreating back, wondering. He’d thought—well he’d figured that at least things could go back to the way they were before between them, if nothing else. And they’d always had a comfortable physicality around each other. He could—they could still touch, he thinks, even if there was nothing else there but the friendship of their childhood. 

But maybe that isn’t true. Maybe if Bucky does know what Steve has felt, has thought about him…maybe there can’t be that effortless and easy contact anymore. Maybe Bucky feels like he has to keep Steve at an arm’s length in order to be here and keep things the way they were. Or keep them from having to talk about it. 

Bucky turns, looking back at Steve expectantly, and Steve realizes he hasn’t moved to follow him. He fixes a smile on his face and hurries to catch up. 

 

They pointedly don’t talk about many things during those first several days of Bucky’s stay. Among the questions Steve is careful not to ask are ones like _why are you here_ , and _why now_ , and _where have you been the last year_ , as well as others like _how long will you stay_ , and _do you feel about me the way I feel about you?_

All of them are dangerous questions, in their own way. So instead they chat and joke about easy things—people from before, stories that don’t have enough importance to hurt either of them. Bucky makes fun of Steve’s beard (“you should probably put that on your list of things you couldn’t do before, punk”) and Steve laughs as Bucky struggles to help him with the everyday chores that keep the farm running (even though they were the same things that had stumped him a year before). 

Bucky takes up residence in the second largest bedroom, the one up the narrow hallway from Steve’s. 

And he still dances just out of reach, when Steve moves, unthinkingly, to touch him. 

He’s been here just a week when Steve is awoken in the night by the sound of Bucky’s voice, high and panicked, saying something Steve can’t make out. 

Steve’s bare feet are on the floor, halfway to Bucky’s room before he’s even registered what’s happening. Adrenaline is singing in his veins and his head is full of Nazis and snipers and Hydra before he even realizes that his feet are on the wooden planks of the farmhouse floor, not the uneven ground of some European forest. But Bucky’s voice is still ringing from behind his bedroom door, full of fear, so Steve plunges ahead. 

He hesitates only a moment at the handle, but shakes his head at himself, and pushes the door open.  
Bucky is thrashing in his bed, moaning unintelligibly as his limbs fight against the tangling sheets. Steve dives forward, grasping his wrists, and saying, 

“Bucky, Buck! It’s okay, you’re okay—wake up!” 

Bucky stops flailing enough for Steve to unwind the sheets that are trapping his legs. He blinks rapidly, his breathing shallow and quick. 

“Steve?” he manages, eyes still panicky and confused. 

Steve’s heart clenches, reminded unbearably of the night he found Bucky strapped to Zola’s table, dazed and nearly lifeless. He swallows hard, trying to sound steadier and more soothing than he feels. 

“Yeah Buck, yeah it’s me, you’re okay—just, just a nightmare.” 

He wonders if Bucky is also reliving that night, if that’s what had him screaming against the imagine confines of his bed, or if it’s entirely other memories—ones Steve doesn’t even know to be anxious over. 

Bucky chokes back a dry sob, and Steve reaches out to cup his cheek with one hand. 

Bucky closes his eyes tight for a moment, leaning into the touch with some unspoken ache written clearly across his face. 

Then he shakes himself, sitting up straighter, and pushes Steve away gently. 

“I’m fine Stevie—I’m okay. You don’t have to—I’m awake now.”

Steve pulls the hand back like it’s been scalded, and tries not to let the hurt show on his face. 

“Well I’m…I’m just up the hall if you need me.” 

Bucky’s face is turned slightly away from him, toward the wall as he yanks roughly at the covers of the bed, straightening them. But Steve thinks it’s still twisted in that same, pained expression. 

“I know pal. Go back to sleep, huh? I’ll be okay.”

Steve wants to protest, but he doesn’t know how. They don’t have a script for this—this is all new, something belonging only to the _after_ and he isn’t sure what Bucky wants or needs from him. He isn’t sure how to make it right between them in this kind of moment instead of saying something that makes Bucky push him away even more. 

So he obeys, retreating back to his room and a silent, sleepless bed. 

The next morning, Bucky is still subdued and seems unwilling even to meet Steve’s eyes. 

The hurt from the night before, of Bucky pushing him away, has grown stale through a sleepless night. Now it’s something heavy in the pit of his stomach, sour like resentment. It flares a little each time Bucky’s gaze skitters away from his across the breakfast table. _It wasn’t supposed to be like this_ , keeps running around his mind in tight, angry circles. But he can’t quite say it. There’s a part of him that knows that even if _this_ is all he has it’s still better than nothing. _Isn’t it?_

The weather seems to have caught his mood, and all the sunshine and clear spring skies of the last couple weeks are gone again under a heavy blanket of storm clouds and low, rumbling thunder in the distance. 

It does nothing for either of their tempers. 

Steve works hard and blindly through his normal morning chores, not even bothering to allow Bucky to assist or to explain any of it to him. What’s the point, he thinks, when Bucky practically has one foot out of his door already? 

Bucky hovers nearby anyway, but not near enough to be normal, to lessen the tight, painful awareness of his separateness that sits in Steve’s stomach.  
Eventually, there’s nothing more for Steve to do, and he can see the rain on the horizon sweeping their way. So he whistles the dogs in, and suggests stiffly to Bucky that they get indoors before they all get soaked. Bucky follows him in at a safe distance. 

Steve gets a fire made in the fireplace, as much to give them something to both set their eyes on instead of each other as it is for the warmth. They both sink into chairs and pretend—at least Steve only succeeds at pretending—to read. 

The rain hits at first with a soft pattering on the roof, and Steve watches out of the corner of his eye when Bucky looks up at the sound, thoughtfully. He wishes they could have shared the moment at a different time, a time when there wasn’t a fist of anger gripped around his throat. It’s one of the small things he’d thought a million times about them experiencing together, here in this new place—this new home that Steve has built. But he can’t enjoy it. So he looks back down blankly at the page of his book on his lap instead. 

It doesn’t immediately register to Steve when the lightening first flashes—it’s the kind of storm they’ve been having all winter, and a good part of the spring, and it doesn’t annoy him except when he wishes he were sleeping. 

But then the first thunderclap hits, and Bucky leaps from his chair. He throws his back to the nearest wall in a half crouch, and Steve can see that his eyes aren’t _here_. They’re staring wildly at something Steve can’t see, and instantly it doesn’t matter that Steve is mad at Bucky, he’s dropping his book and rushing to his side. 

“Bucky!” he calls, to him, hating the shakes that have taken over Bucky’s frame, wondering if this has been what _peacetime_ has meant for Bucky—nightmares and terrors and reliving all the worst things he didn’t let himself feel during the war on loop. Steve puts his hands on Bucky’s shoulders, running them up and down his arms. 

Bucky falls against him blindly, gasping _Steve, Steve?_ In a breathless voice. 

Steve pulls Bucky against his chest until the tremors subside, and his breathing steadies, rubbing his hands across Bucky’s back and shoulders and making soothing sounds. 

Bucky gives a last shuddering breath, and then draws away from the circle of Steve’s arms. He meets Steve’s eyes, and Steve can see that he’s back, he’s Bucky again. And his mouth opens slightly as if he’s going to say something…

But instead he turns out of Steve’s grasp, arms clutching at his sides as he faces the wall, turning his back on Steve. 

And that’s it—Steve’s anger flares up too brightly to ignore or push down. 

“God Buck, I just want to—I know you don’t want me to touch you but I’m just trying to help, why can’t you—” he chokes off the end of the question in frustration, afraid of what he’s going to say or ask. 

And Bucky whirls again to face him, and his eyes are blazing too—his face reflecting Steve’s anger. He drops his hands and straightens, no longer hugging them to himself but holding them in clenched fists. He raises his chin, challenging.

“You think I don’t want you _touching_ me?” he asks, his voice shaking a little. He takes a little step forward, and Steve falters back, suddenly not sure if Bucky’s going to hit him, not sure what the fierce look on his face means. “You think I don’t want—God, Steve _all_ I fucking want is—”

And Bucky takes another impossibly fast step toward Steve, bringing both hands up to cup his face before his mouth is on Steve’s in a swift, crushing kiss.

He pulls back, dropping his hands and shaking his head, resigned. But his eyes are hard and defiant. 

Steve is stunned, speechless, and all he can do is stare back at Bucky, one hand to his mouth uncertain—head spinning because there’s no way this moment can be real. 

Bucky laughs, humorlessly. 

“Look I—I knew I shouldn’t have come here. I knew you wanted…wanted to be like it was. I thought I could…could do that, for you.” 

The sharp edge falls from his face a little, leaving a bare vulnerability that claws at Steve’s heart. 

“I thought I could do it because it was better to have some of you than none of you. But you’re everywhere Stevie, you’re putting your arm around me and cooking me breakfast and I just, I can’t—”

“Shut up.” Steve says, finally finding his voice. “God, you—you _idiot_ , shut up—”

And he crosses the space Bucky has put between them, sweeping Bucky into his arms and letting his momentum push them back to the wall. His mouth finds Bucky’s again easily, like he’s done it a thousand times and maybe he might as well have for all the moments between them that should have ended just like this. 

Bucky lets out only a small sound of surprise against Steve’s lips, but Steve is pressing back against it, and Bucky’s mouth opens readily for him. The tension in his body melts swiftly, and he softens into Steve’s embrace, arms coming up to circle around his neck and kissing him back with a desperate hunger. 

At the first swipe of tongue against tongue though, Steve pulls back, slowing them down. He relaxes his tense body a little, and eases his grip on Bucky without letting any space open between them, sliding a gentle hand up to cradle the back of his neck. This moment has been too long in the making to let it pass by so fast. Bucky sighs against his cheek, and then brushes his lips softly across Steve’s. They stay like that for a moment, mouths close but not quite touching, sharing each other’s breath. Then Steve leans in and kisses him again, softer and slower, like they have all the time in the world—like he means to do it a thousand times before he’s done. 

After he doesn’t know how long, Bucky releases a shuddering sigh, and places a soft hand on Steve’s chest, pushing him back just enough so that Bucky can look into his eyes. Steve knows that his own face must be a little hazy, drunk on kissing and the feeling that this might not be a dream after all. Bucky is looking back at him with a similar look, plus something like wonder, verging on disbelief. 

“Stevie what are you—what are we doing here?”

“You really gotta ask?” Steve asks, raising a hand to brush Bucky’s hair back from where it’s fallen across his forehead. 

“But what—when—you always—you kept talking about how you wanted it to be just like it was before.” Bucky says, a little helplessly. 

Steve frowns, and runs a thumb over Bucky’s cheekbone, and Bucky leans into it even though his eyes are wide with a mixture of hope and confusion. 

“Didn’t you want this then? Before, I mean?” Steve asks. 

Bucky lets out a noise that’s half a laugh and half something more painful, and leans forward to press his forehead against Steve’s, hands coming up to wrap around the back of his neck again. 

“Did you?” his voice is barely a whisper. 

“ _Always_ —I always—it was only ever you for me, Buck. I thought—I hoped you felt the same way…after my mom died and you asked me to…then the war happened and you left. And then we were together again and I was different and you were different and I thought…I thought maybe we’d lost our shot at it.” 

“And when you asked me to come here?” Bucky asks, the words coming a little stronger, “When I told you you didn’t know what you were asking…?”

“I thought you…I thought you wanted to forget. Like it was too much that had happened and maybe if I made things easy and light like they were when we were kids maybe you wouldn’t…wouldn’t push me away.” He pauses. “why? What did you think I was asking?”

Bucky laughs, and Steve can see it reach the fine lines around his eyes. 

“I thought you needed me to be who I was when we were ten. And I didn’t know if I could be near you and not…not _have_ you. Not have this. Not after everything we’d been through. Guess I was right about that part at least.” 

Steve laughs too, then, understanding. 

“So basically what you’re saying is we could have been doing this all this time, if we weren’t both the exact same kind of stupid?”

“Sounds like it, jerk.” 

“Takes one to know one, punk.” 

They both smile, at least until their mouths meet again, tentative at first but with confidence building quickly. And Bucky’s hands are tangled in Steve’s hair, and Steve’s hands are gripped in the fabric at the small of Bucky’s back. Steve is aware of every single place where their bodies touch, Bucky’s chest and thighs and hands pressed against him. Then Bucky edges a knee between Steve’s and it sends a spark straight down his spine and he can’t think of anything at all but the slight rock of Bucky’s hips against his. A small growl escapes his throat as he presses harder against Bucky’s, wanting him closer, closer, closer, and Bucky bites Steve’s bottom lip in agreement. 

It doesn’t take them long to find their old, easy rhythm even in this new, startling way. Almost as if they’d both known this is where they wanted to be all along. 

*

Steve adds _kissing Bucky Barnes_ to the list of things that Steve Rogers from before was never able to do. Bucky flushes when he sees it, and punches his arm. But Steve can tell he’s pleased. 

And even though it’s been a whole spring and summer, and now the better part of a fall, Steve still can’t get used to waking up and seeing Bucky’s face on the pillow beside him. Sometimes he can’t help but just lie there, watching him breathe softly—until Bucky wakes up and tells him he’s being weird and asks why he didn’t get up and make coffee if he’s so awake. Steve doesn’t care. It still takes his breath away a little. 

Some mornings they both sleep late, because Bucky’s nightmares are better sleeping beside Steve but they aren’t gone entirely and they don’t worry about getting up if it’s been a long night fighting the dreams. 

Steve knows now all the different forms that Bucky’s nightmares take. It hurts to hear them, all the moments that Steve remembers as well as the ones he wasn’t there for, that he couldn’t spare him from, but he’d rather know than not. And in return, he tells Bucky each time he remembers something he wishes he didn’t. And each time he feels like he’s living in a strange vessel rather than his own body. 

In those times, Bucky traces the lines of Steve’s arms to his shoulders to his back with soft kisses, letting his hands roam and roam until his back arches and Bucky convinces Steve to be glad of being in this skin in this moment. 

And Steve gets to watch Bucky’s delight as the apple blossoms turn into green apples and then grow redder and redder among the leaves. 

They’re walking one day in October, close to time again for the apples to be picked, because Bucky likes to walk between the rows every day to keep track of their progress like an anxious parent (and _that’s_ a thought, Steve thinks, putting it away to ponder over another time, because they have all the time in the world now). 

Bucky has an open, contented smile on his face, wearing one of Steve’s flannel shirts and hand clasped loosely in Steve’s as they walk along. The leaves are starting to change, creating a riot of color all around them. 

Steve looks over at him as Bucky takes it all in, and it’s like he’s seeing it for the first time too and he’s never seen anything as beautiful in his entire life. And his chest doesn’t feel big enough to hold it all—to hold how much this feels like _home_ , how much he feels like he’s exactly who and where he’s meant to be. 

He lets go of Bucky’s hand, and turns to the nearest tree, plucking the best, reddest apple he can find before turning back. 

Bucky has stopped, stance relaxed, and he looks at Steve happily, a small smile on his face. 

Steve drops to a knee in front of him, rubbing the apple on his sleeve to shine it, and then holds it out to Bucky. Bucky laughs, shaking his head at Steve. 

“What’s this?”

“An apple,” Steve says with a grin. 

“Yeah, got that far.” Bucky grins back. 

“’Cause I ain’t got a ring.”

Bucky’s smile drops a little, though not unhappily. 

“What’re you saying, Stevie?” he asks in a low voice. 

“I’m saying I want you here, always. I’m saying this is it—for me. Stay with me, please? No matter what, ’til death do us part?”

Bucky heaves a deep sigh, as if asking for patience, and bends down to kiss Steve softly, hands lightly bracketing his face. 

“You dumb dope,” he says affectionately, taking the apple from Steve’s hand. “I said yes to that a long time ago, and death felt a lot closer then. Now I think you’re gonna be stuck with me around here for a good long time.”

He takes a bite of the apple, crunching it with relish, and gives Steve a broad smile. 

Steve stands up, and puts his arm around Bucky’s neck as they start walking again. 

“A lifetime long, you think?”

Bucky leans his head, resting it on Steve’s shoulder, and slides his free hand around his waist. 

“Yeah. Yeah that sounds about right.” 

Steve presses his lips to Bucky’s temple.

A lifetime might just be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr [odette-and-odile](http://odette-and-odile.tumblr.com)
> 
> As ever your comments and kudos mean the world to me--I wrote this for the bang all the way back in June and I've been DYING to see what you all think ever since. 
> 
> Also keep an eye out for a Bucky-centric companion piece to this fic out soon :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [So I Took a Faithful Leap [Letters]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16235957) by [odetteandodile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/odetteandodile/pseuds/odetteandodile), [WitchyLurker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchyLurker/pseuds/WitchyLurker)




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